Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The chill factor of the 14 years jumps off the page. It looms darkly over all of this. We favour removing the entire section on offences. It may well have a great deal to do with how we define the legislation. That is why we feel the Title is important with the reference to the regulation of women's health. Let us say that we were regulating men's health, would we have to insert that it would be illegal and subject to 14 years imprisonment to force a man to have a vasectomy, which relates to his reproductive health? One would not as that is already governed by legislation covering offences against the person, including grievous bodily harm and others. Likewise, there is other legislation to cover the case where a woman is forced against her will by a nasty lunatic or dangerous person to have an abortion. That legislation already deals with violence against the person and includes hefty sentences. We are trying here to regulate for abortion, whether the Minister agrees to call a spade a spade. As such, this should not be included as it provides for an offence of carrying out a procedure where that offence is already covered by other legislation dealing with violent acts against individuals. I refer the Minister to the last debate and Deputy Nolan's amendment on making people pay for the services. The Minister said himself that forcing women to pay for the pill meant making them go to the Internet. Quite correctly, he opposed that. If we can create a legislative framework around the regulation of women's health and the provision of full, free, safe and legal access to abortion, the need to go online will not need to be covered by the section. We would like to see it removed entirely.